“Sic Semper Tyrannis”, thus reads the phrase at the bottom of the seal of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Translated, it means “thus always to tyrants.” Above it is an image of Virtue, sword in hand and a foot on the chest of the fallen Tyranny with his crown laying nearby. The symbolism is obvious: that virtue will triumph over oppression. Those of us who have read the Bible through to the end understand this will be the ultimate outcome. That is the ultimate outcome... but what about now?

The motto was suggested at the Virginia Convention in 1776 by George Mason... then placed in the official state seal designed by Declaration of Independence signer, George Wythe. This was at a time when the commonwealth and our fledgling nation were locked in a struggle for survival and independence from the British crown. The Declaration phrased it, “appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions“, meaning that they were looking for divine assistance in their struggle for freedom.

This struggle was one that they understood to be theirs... that they were not just depending on the righteousness of their cause being sufficient for success. These founding fathers knew they had to put forth the effort and endure the pain and hardship of their course... but they also knew that they had the force of natural law, the desire for freedom and their creator on their side.

They knew the struggle was not just for themselves, but for all the other citizens of the the colonies who craved freedom. The freedom fighters knew it was part of their service to their fellow man. James Madison put it this way, "Resistance to tyranny is service to God.” Not only did they look to the hand of God to aid their efforts, they also saw such efforts as serving Him and in spreading the divinely mandated freedom throughout their land.

People of that era did not have the easy life we have today but there was a common understanding of Christian principles... of right and wrong. They understood that rights came from God and not from government. They knew they had to oppose restrictions on their rights.

Today, we don't see a power from across the sea encroaching on our liberties and property. For those of us in Virginia, it is right across the Potomac River. We have a president who is appointing one czar after another. Each one has a sole purpose in live to meddle with, and manipulate, some area of our lives. The last I heard, there were more than twenty of these petty czars, reporting only the the alpha czar, Barack Hussein Obama. They exist to tell us what to do about energy, and the environment. They are here to tell us how much we should be paid, unless we are union members. They are appointed to tell the automobile companies what kind of cars they should make for us to drive.

Even Mr. Porkbarrel, Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-WV) registered his concern in a letter to the White House where he wrote, "The rapid and easy accumulation of power by White House staff can threaten the constitutional system of checks and balances." He went on to complain about past czars, "They rarely testify before congressional committees and often shield the information and decision-making process behind the assertion of executive privilege."

The point is that they are given significant power in the executive branch, yet are not subject to the Senate confirmation process or congressional oversight. The president could, and may yet appoint the likes of Ward Churchill to oversee education. He has already appointed John Holdren who, in the past has advocated forced abortions and mass sterilizations, as his science guru.

Much of this is going on under the radar and we won't know about it until we run into rules, regulations and restrictions created by executive fiat. We will generally find ourselves alone, facing the power of the federal government as it willfully violates the natural law that our forefathers struggled to lay down as the foundation of our constitution.

The question then becomes how will we respond. Will we tell census takers all the private personal information they request? Will we permit bureaucrats in Washington prescribe our health care? Will we quietly permit federal inspectors inside our homes? Will we stand quietly by as our weapons are confiscated?

In the early morning hours of April 19, 1775 our forefathers made that choice as they stood on Lexington Green, then later that day at Concord, when the British troops came to confiscate their weapons. The colonists stood up the the British regulars... and the regulars did not succeed!

Each one must answer for him or herself, but even Albert Einstein, not a particularly political or revolutionary man had this advice, "Never do anything against conscience even if the State demands it."

Way too early on the morning of July 4, I rode into our nations capitol with a bus load of patriots from Chester VA. As we passed the Pentagon and followed the Southwest Freeway across the bridge into Washingon DC, passing the Jefferson Memorial, I heard a comment that it used to be exciting coming into the city and visit the famous landmarks, but now it was depressing. It seems the government buildings and the city itself no longer represented the beacon of freedom we heard about as we grew up, but had become a symbol of oppression and a drain on the American people.

Several thousand people from all over the country gathered in Upper Senate Park in the shadow of the halls of congress. Speakers came from all over he country as well and said some mighty fine things. However, what they said was not nearly as important as the fact that we were standing together on a beautiful summer day, within stones throw of the Capitol (to my knowledge no physical stones were thrown), meeting new friends, fellow patriots, from about twenty to twenty five different states.

We had a great time encouraging each other and just enjoying the company of people who love their country. I'm sure this was the case at every other party around America the Beautiful. I'm sure everyone left inspired by new ideas and with a fresh enthusiasm to continue the fight to preserve our country.

The test of the experience will be rolling out of bed Monday morning, Tuesday morning and every other day that follows. We have our daily lives, most of them so full of stuff that it is easy to forget the big picture of what needs to be done. Work is certainly important. Families are important. Our church and communities are important as well.

It's easy to loose sight of the big picture – the big problems facing our country when we have twenty minutes to get dinner together before Billy's Little League Game, Mary's dance lesson or a church committee meeting. It's easy to believe what many tell us: that one person can't make much of a difference or that someone else will take care of the problem... or that the problems just cannot be solved.

Lies, they are all lies, every one of them! Let's start with the first one... that you can't make a difference. If you attended any of the tea parties, you were with any where from several hundred to several thousand people who believe pretty much the same things you believe. You are not alone! Samuel Adams told us, "It does not take a majority to prevail ... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brush fires of freedom in the minds of men."

Someone else may NOT fix the problem. Would you be willing to bet the future of your children and grandchildren on the actions of someone else you may neither know nor influence? As I've said before, to all your friends, neighbors and acquaintances, you ARE someone else. If you can look in the mirror and tell yourself that you are willing to let the future of this great country up to the the actions and dedication of other people, perhaps this fight is not for you. The fact that you are reading this, gives me optimism that this is not the case.

As far as problems not being solvable... we are Americans! Our fathers and grandfathers chased tyrants from Europe and Japan. Our scientists and engineers made it possible for men to walk on the moon. Our medical system is finding cures for diseases that used to kill millions. When the naysayers tell us that problems cannot be solved, all we hear is that we have problems and have just not found the solution yet.

Even if you did not get to participate in this July Forth outpouring of support for our country, take heart because of those who did. There are millions of us and we will only be denied if we loose heart and permit it. Of course we're in for some rocky roads ahead, but consider the colonists taking on the strongest economic and military power of their time... and they won! But not without cost. If we persist, if we don't loose heart, if we hang together, we will win too.

Remember what Winston Churchill told the Harrow School in October of 1941, an extremely bleak time in British history with the blitz going on at home and the advancing German army abroad, “Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never--in nothing, great or small, large or petty--never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.” Good advice then, and good advice now.



See what others say about about defending your freedoms at http://www.politicalchristian.org/quotes.html .

Abraham Lincoln once said, "Let us readopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it the practices and policy which harmonize with it." This was necessary during his time, how much more today when the American people face so many challenges to the freedoms we have long enjoyed and want to pass on to our children and grandchildren. However to readopt it... we need to read it, not just once, but over and over until it becomes part of us. Once someone absorbs its precepts and the concept that God created each of us to be free... they are unfit for servitude.

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.


Fifty six men signed this document that, had they failed, would have put a hangman's noose around their necks. As it was it cost many family members, homes and their personal wealth. What are we willing to sacrifice for the freedoms we inherited as Americans... not to just keep it for ourselves, but for our friends and neighbors who may not understand the danger to our liberties and even more, for our families and the generations to come?

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” So says one of the most important documents in the history of the United States of America: the Declaration of Independence. The realization of these rights was the whole point of the bloody struggle to break free from the control of the British crown that saw itself as the originator and dispenser of rights to the people, both at home and in the colonies.

The signers of this document pledged “our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” to establishing a government in the new land where these rights to life, liberty and so much more were recognized. Once free of the oppressive monarch, they set about to create a system where the people were the ultimate authority and government answered to its employers: the citizens.

They laboriously created a constitutional plan where three branches were supposed to balance each other so no one reigned supreme. They did this by limiting the reach of the legislative, executive and judicial branches to restrain dictatorial rule. So concerned were some of the leaders immediately following the presentation of the document that it did not sufficiently restrain the power of the central government that its ratification by all the states could not have been accomplished without the promise of additional guarantees of individual freedoms and restraints on governmental power. Hence the first ten amendments, known as the Bill of Rights, quickly followed acceptance of the original document.

Many today believe they have the rights of free speech, religion, personal protection through firearms because of these amendments. In reality, every human being has these rights, because they were bought into being by a loving creator who wants to see each one of us live and prosper to the best of our abilities. Then why was it necessary to codify them in the constitution? The answer is the same as for any other provision of the constitution, and that is so the government would recognize the limits of its power.

If we were to take the approach that the piece of paper granted us these rights, we would be in the precarious position of leaving them up to what ever men, legislative body or judiciary panel would decide to give us. This would return us to the plight of the colonists under King George. Our creator created us to be free and governments that fail to recognize these rights are operating in violation of what the founding fathers called “natural law”, which was the law that was self evident to anyone with the Christian background of these men.

Why is this important? If these rights are unalienable as our founders believed, they are existent apart from any decree from DC. On the other hand, if they come from men, they can be taken away by men. We then have no recourse if these men (or women) decide that we have few or none of the rights laid out by our forefathers. Worse yet, by doing this, we move from being citizens in charge of our government to being its subjects.

This is the price the secular humanists are willing to pay to eliminate the Christian influence from our great country. Their fear of the absolute moral teaching coming from the Word of God leads them to accept enslavement to whims of leaders, ultimately a much more heavy handed control, but without the moral measurement of the ten commandments.

This is the underlying basis of the entire culture war in our country... but it isn't really cultural, it is spiritual.